Posted by JonIn my last post, I talked about the captions that proposal teams place with the graphics in their proposals. I was fascinated by an article in The Guardian over the summer, which explored the same issue in relation to newspapers. The author, Barbara Harper explained:

​At the start of my career in newspapers, a chief subeditor told me a story, possibly apocryphal, to illustrate the dangers of careless picture caption writing.

A prize-winning cow was photographed at an agricultural show flanked by its owner and another woman. The caption writer failed to take on board the information that the second woman would be cropped out when the photograph was published. It duly appeared showing only one woman and bearing the caption: “Mrs Brown (left) and her prize cow.”

​Good captions clearly form an important part of effective page design – and effective design impacts how the evaluators review and score your proposal. The article’s well worth a read: I especially liked the comment from Kari Pedersen, the Guardian’s art director (news):

​“Page design is about striking a compromise between beauty and clarity…. However, clarity is the most important thing and captions are a big part of that.”